If gameplay can become a new breakthrough in copyright protection,

Chinese game manufacturers are about to hurry up and "make up for the lessons".

Is the lawsuit of the two Japan companies related to our Chinese company?

Answer: You must plan ahead!

Nintendo, a well-known game manufacturer, announced on its official website that the company has filed a patent infringement lawsuit with The Pokémon Company in the Tokyo District Court against Pocket Pair, the developer of the game "Phantom Beast Palu".

According to Nintendo, the Phantom Beast Palu game is alleged to infringe a number of patents and requires the defendant to cease the infringement and pay damages.

According to the data, the game sold more than 1 million copies in just 8 hours after it was launched on January 19, and 7 million copies were sold within 5 days of being on the shelves.

In addition, according to data from the game database website SteamDB, the number of concurrent users of "Phantom Beast Palu" on Steam reached 2.01 million, making it one of the paid games with the highest number of concurrent online players in history, second only to "PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds" with 3.25 million.

But what makes Nintendo difficult to accept is that the game is similar to "Pokémon" in terms of character design and gameplay mechanics, and it was questioned by the industry as plagiarism when it was born.

Various plagiarism debates eventually attracted the copyright owners of the Pokémon IP, The Pokémon Company and Nintendo.

On January 25, 2024, The Pokémon Company issued a statement on its official website, stating that they have received many inquiries from customers regarding Palu the Phantom Beast. The Pokémon Company does not license other companies to use Pokémon intellectual property or assets.

It is worth noting that among the exhibitors at the 2024 Tokyo Game Show, which was originally scheduled to open on September 26, information about the PS5 version of "Phantom Beast Palu" has been revealed, indicating that the game will soon be available on the Sony PlayStation 5 platform.

Previously, in June this year, John Buckley, the community manager of "Phantom Beast Palu", had unofficially revealed the game's intention to launch on the Playstation platform, although Pocketpair has not officially announced this news to the public.

Landing on the game console next door may have been the key to Nintendo's final decision to resort to law.

But what exactly is the lawsuit? Shule once analyzed this problem to the media, namely:

It is true that the collection gameplay of "Phantom Beast Palu" does borrow from "Pokémon", but the overall gameplay is still biased towards survival games, but the character design takes the cute route, which does have many similarities with "Pokémon".

For games, the borrowing of gameplay is not infringement, but the high imitation of the game image and background is suspected of infringement.

It is impossible to confirm whether it was AI drawing that caused the "Pokémon" elements to be incorporated into the AI deep learning process.

But as new news continues to pour in, this argument may not hold water.

Perhaps, the breakthrough of the lawsuit really lies in the gameplay that could have been "copycat".

It is reported that Nintendo and The Pokémon Company have applied for a patent in 2023.

The patent content is that the player throws items in the field to catch monsters.

Theoretically, all games that use a similar system will be considered infringing by Nintendo.

In addition, such lawsuits may also be emerging from domestic game manufacturers.

Recently, the three-year "Pokemon: Remastered" rights protection case ushered in the first-instance verdict.

According to the announcement of the Pokémon Company, due to copyright infringement and unfair competition, Guangzhou Maichi Network Technology Co., Ltd. awarded the plaintiff Pokémon Company a total of RMB 107 million for economic losses and reasonable expenses for rights protection.

The court of first instance found that the core elements of the accused game, such as the Pokémon characters, game protagonists, and maps, corresponded and were similar to the corresponding elements of The Pokémon Company's games.

At the same time, the multiple element systems formed by the combination of game elements are highly similar or even identical, and the design of multiple numerical systems is the same, so the specific story expressions of the accused game and the game of The Pokémon Company constitute substantial similarity.

Combined with this dispute with Palu, why do copyright disputes often occur?

What kind of inspiration and warning does this incident give to domestic game manufacturers in copyright work?

In this regard, Li Yutong, a reporter from the Daily Economic News, had an exchange with Shule, and the monkey thought:

If gameplay can become a new breakthrough in copyright protection, then Chinese game manufacturers should hurry up to "make up for it".

Copyright disputes in the field of games are mainly borrowed or similar, resulting in the so-called tribute becoming a hot plagiarism.

As the ninth art, the game really can't be made out of nothing, but it still has its own original spirit, which can be referenced, but not carried.

Previously, the trend of copycats and skins in the domestic game industry continued for 20 years, which made some game manufacturers lack the necessary reverence for intellectual property rights.

The occurrence of some lawsuits has also given a wake-up call to the domestic game industry, which is devoting itself to global competition.

After all, the commonly used borrowing style of play in the past may become a new hole in intellectual property litigation in the future.

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